glaciers and mountain plateaus

This somewhat national-romantic tour through perhaps the world's most beautiful fjord between the villages of Eidfjord, Ulvik, and Lofthus gives many souls visual chills. Nonetheless, there is a real cold lurking around the corner. These municipalities house or border large parts of two of Norway's coldest, inaccessible, and hardy areas, Hardangervidda and Hardangerjøkulen. The former is Europe's largest high mountain plateau and Scandinavia's largest national park. Hardangerjøkulen is Norway's sixth-largest glacier. It is about 300 meters thick at its deepest point and has a larger area than Manhattan in New York. There are over 1,500 glaciers in Norway covering almost 1% of the country's land area.